THE NEW VARIORUM " HAMLET."*
THE laborious task that Mr. II. H. Furness has imposed upon himself necessarily proceeds but slowly. At an interval of four years the third instalment of the work follows the second, and it would seem as if the progress of the undertaking should be calcu- lated at the rate of one volume every two years. There can be
A Pee Variorum Edition of Shakespeare. Edited by Horace Howard Furness. Vols. III. and IV.: " Hamlet." London:and Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott and Co. 1877.
no question, however, that the earlier volumes have required much more time than the later ones will demand, owing, were it to nothing else, to the complexity of the materials and inexperience of the method. The present volumes abound in special difficulties of their own, not the least of which spring from the extraordinary number and extent of the .discussions upon so many points con- nected with the play. A glance at the bibliography of Hamlet, printed at the end of the second volume, would strike the nervelessness of despair into any editor not fortified by the intensest love of the author and of the work. Instead of com- plaining that Mr. Furness has been so long over Hamlet, and has not compressed it into a single volume, we should rather confess surprise that practice has brought him such rapidity and certainty of execution, and that he has been able to reduce the work to a scale comparatively so limited. Mr. Furness is to be congratulated on the completion of the most difficult, the most important, and the most interesting of all the volumes of his series.
The original plan of the work, as already carried out in Romeo and Juliet and in Macbeth, has been adhered to in Hamlet. The only essential modification arises from the inevitable impossibility of the attempt to condense a whole literature into the short compass of two moderate volumes. The first of these presents the text, formed by the editor on his own judgment. Below this, on the same page, is given a collation of the texts of the Quartos and the Folios, as well as of some thirty modern editions. Then follow the notes of the modern editors, together with such other meritorious notes, emendations, conjectures, and comments as Mr. Furness could lay his hands upon. In forming his text, the editor follows the safe principle of Dr. Johnson, adopting a cautious conservatism ; he is more anxious to accept what he finds, than to set things right. In regard to the other points also he evinces much tolerance and catholicity of mind. Do as an editor will in such a case as this, he must be prepared to find many readers disposed to adopt a standard differing more or less from his own ; and probably in no other subject would this inclination make itself more strongly felt than in Hamlet. For who is there that is not ready " to play the critic upon Herakles," with his own certain emendation or interpretation ? And the impossibility of sure and unquestionable results has been made so much of, that many readers will not delay reliance on their own judgment till they have educated their judgment by appropriate study. Such independent criticism or rash free- thinking cannot but conflict to some extent with the broad views of a judicious editor, as well as with the reverent conservatism that worships the letter no less than the spirit of the text. Even intelligent and well-informed students are occasionally not slow to manifest impatience with professional Shakespearians, who not unfrequently seem to be in the position of people that cannot see the wood for the trees. And there is often a good deal of reason in the unprofessional or popular view. Let us look, for instance, at the line, " Oh, horrible ! oh, horrible! most horrible !" (Act I., se. v., 80), towards the end of one of the Ghost's speeches. In all the old copies this exclamation is given to the Ghost ; conse- quently, in nearly all the modern editions the line is retained for the Ghost, very few of the editors venturing to transfer it wholly or even partially to Hamlet. At the same time, hardly one of the editors but thinks it either probable or certain that the exclama- tion is an uncontrollable outburst of Hamlet. In the first quarto, which is very close to the present version in this speech, the line is divided ; the Ghost interrupts his harrowing recital by exclaiming " 0 horrible ! most horrible !" while Hamlet relieve i his high- strung feelings by ejaculating " 0 God !" The Stage tradition also supports the same view : Garrick, as Hamlet, spoke the line, and so does Mr. Barry Sullivan. In situations like this, where the authority of the copies clashes with the general strong sense of dramatic propriety, an editor's deference to the copies stands but a poor chance of being highly esteemed. Then, on the other hand, resentment of a rash change or preference of reading has occasionally to be reckoned with. We should agree with readers that should regard it as unfortunate that Mr. Furness has been in- fluenced by the symmetry of the first quarto in Act III., sc. i, 151 :— " The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword." In this reading, the corresponding words in the two sets of three occur in exactly the same order,—the expected arrangement in a very unexpected construction. But the rest of the quartos and all the folios transpose thus : " The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword :" giving an unsymmetrical order. And most editors- preserve the latter reading, while they justify the former. it is a very fine hair to split, perhaps ; but we think the reference of Dr. Farmer to the Rape of Lucreece, 615-6, is much in point :— " For princes are the glass, the school, the book, Where subjects' eyes do learn, do read, do look." in this example, there does not appear to be any good reason for the inversion, except the obvious exigency of the rhyme. The order is certainly not an oversight. The case in Hamlet may, indeed, possibly be an oversight ; but if the rhyme was potent enough to influence the arrangement in the Rape of Lucreece, the same potency may here be reasonably ascribed to the melody and rhythm. It may well be that Shakespeare, on coming to the last two words, was struck with the advantage of departing from a bald regularity, and at the same time strengthening the line by the inversion ; nobody could miss the sense.
As with the collation of the texts, so with the collation of the editors' views ; the desirability of an historical array of explanatory comments is incontestable. In this department, the conservative principle, which here coincides with the broad principle of generous inclusion, may easily restrain an editor's better judgment from sacrificing some not very useful, however well-meant, criticism• Consider, for instance, the famous " sea of troubles " (Act
sc. i., 59). "To take arms against a sea" is undoubtedly a mixed metaphor ; that it is an inadmissible expression, however, is far from being equally clear. When Pope started the difficulty, perhaps he did not sufficiently recognise the duty of trying to put himself in the author's place ; possibly he reversed the position. Put yourself in Shakespeare's place, as far as you can, and immediately you are required to con- ceive facts with extraordinary vividness, and to discern like- ness in the midst of unlikeness with a rapidity such as no other mind on record ever did. Let this be kept in view with the "taking arms against a sea of troubles," and one has no hesitation in dispensing with the whole of Mr. Furness's two-page note, reserving only three or four lines, containing the substance of the view that recommended itself to the practical judgment of Garrick. The'rest is hardly more than exercise of ingenuity, invested with some' historical interest. And after all, what is the value of a presumption of error founded upon a mixed metaphor in Shake- speare? We might as reasonably suspect a corrupt reading when- ever we encounter tautology in Mr. Swinburne. The same spirit of determination to discover something or to rectify something appears again and again, when the editors pick out some re- dundancy of expression in Hamlet, shake their heads over it, set it aside as probably corrupt, and suggest the very thing that Shakespeare might, would, or should have written. This morbid sniffing after unsoundness points to the necessity of a wider course of reading. The longest of the shorter msthetic criticisms naturally occur in the illustration of such troublesome passages as these :—" The dram of eale . . . . scandal" (I., iv.) ; " good kissing carrion " (II., ii.) ; " 2Eneas' tale to Dido " (II., ;
"to be, or not to be" i.) ; "the dozen or sixteen lines" (or more accurately, the "speech of some dozen or sixteen lines,"
II., ; Hamlet's age (V., i.) ; and " drink up eisel " (V., i). Most of these extend over several pages. On the ", speech of some dozen or sixteen lines " we could have wished Mr. Furness to give a more definite and marked assent to the line of argument adopted by Mr. Furnivall, but on nearly all points where he speaks for himself—and these might profitably have been more numerous—his comments are moat judicious and valuable. Many of the verbal and grammatical notes might have been greatly shortened ; for instance, "it head" (I., ii., 216), " sith " (II, ii., 6), " for to " i., 167) ; and not a few might have been omitted. Dr. Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar is rightly assumed to be in the hands of the reader ; Mr. Furness might have also assumed that in nearly all cases the reader can make the applications for himself. There is no inscrutable mystery in " as" for "as if" (or otherwise), " a" in " abroad," " a-making," &c., the omission of " to " before the infinitive, and so forth. Positive mistakes have very successfully eluded our notice :—In the line " I think it to be no other, but e'en so" (I., i., 108), the "to" has crept into the text accidentally, rendering the note to " be " inapplicable ; in the note to III., ii., 74, " myself " stands in a confusing passage for "thyself ;" and so on, in- significantly. A blundering explanation from Matzner about "or ere" (I., ii., 147), provokes us to ask how long English scholars are to keep up the mock humility of doing elaborate homage to Matzner for the most obvious and elementary facts of their own language. And by this question, we certainly mean no disparage- ment to the great Berlin scholar.
The second volume is wholly Appendix. Foremost stands a reprint of the earliest quarto (1603), which differs from the rest so materially that its various readings could not be set down fully and intelligibly in the foot-notes ; and this is preceded by a long note on the date and the text, containing an account of the .different theories of its origin. Next come six of the eight chapters
of the Hystorie of Hamblet, the story whereon, perhaps, was founded either this tragedy, or the lost original dramathat Shake- speare afterwards changed to its present shape. Then follows Fratricide Punished, or Prince Hamlet of Denmark, a translation of the old German tragedy Der bestrafte Brudermord, oder Prinz Hamlet aus Dmnnemark, which itself, Mr. Furness has little doubt, is a translation of an old English tragedy, and most probably of the one that is the ground-work of the Quarto of 1603. The remain- ing two-thirds of the second volume are devoted to more than 125 representative specimens of the msthetic criticism of Hamlet by English, German, and French writers. The shorter opinions are incorporated in the commentary to the text, and the longer are given here in chronological order. The point illustrated most fully from the English critics is, in Mr. Furness's words, " the one great insoluble mystery of Hamlet's sanity." Mr. Furness himself, like many other critics, sees little mystery about the matter ; he holds that Hamlet is not mad at all, nor pretends to be mad. The most interesting of the remaining points is the note on "Actors' Interpretations,"iwhich we should have been glad to find much fuller than it is. There is but too good reason for regretting the meagreness of the accounts of how our older great actors spoke, but hardly a whit less meagre are the accounts of those that have played Hamlet within living memory. We are not satisfied that Mr. Furness has done his best in recording Mr. Fechter's impersonation from Miss Kate Field's jottings. Mr. Irving's impersonation, too, it seems to us, might have been more fully illustrated from still more discriminating criticisms. And we venture to think that there are other Hamlets, some of whose characteristics are not unworthy of permanent record in Mr. Furness's volumes. The German criticism, from Leasing down- wards, is represented at about equal length with the English criticism. This in itself is a notable condensation, even when we observe that the selection is very much confined to the one point of Hamlet's character ; and it must prove an immense advantage to students who either do not know German, or do not possess -a library of German opinion on Hamlet, to be able at last to read the sum of the whole matter in their own tongue. The longest extract is, as it ought to be, the most important at the present time ; it contains the substance of Professor Werder's analysis of the play, which is the best exposition of the dissent from the theory advanced by Goethe. The French criticisms are dismissed in a few pages, and we shall not charge Mr. Farness with illiberality. A formidable bibliography of the play occupies the last thirty pages of the second volume.
Whatever occasional shortcomings may occur, rightly or wrongly, to various readers, we cannot doubt that all such blemishes will be regarded as nothing, in view of the arduous labours of the editor and the general excellenci of his execution of the work. The favourable judgments bestowed upon the previous volumes of the series must now be repeated, with an additional emphasis corre- sponding to the vastly greater difficulty of arranging a miniature library of the literature of Hamlet. The publishers, we must add, have again emulated the editor's zeal for the honour of Shake- speare. Yet when we remember how desirable it is that this com- prehensive book should reach the hands of every Shakespearian student, we feel bound to suggest the preparation of a cheap popular edition. For this purpose, a considerable amount of very interesting, but not essentially useful or true, matter might be thrown out, and the substantial advantages of the work presented in a single, fair-sized volume. Such an issue would multiply in- definitely the value of an edition of Hamlet which we do not proclaim with superlatives of laudation, but simply recommend as incomparable.
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